Yeah, Batman: Return of the Joker has this similar effect during the initial intro prior to the title screen (the "BATMAN" text flickers until it fully comes into view, then slowly pans upwards while alternating every other frame with the text "Return of the Joker(tm)").

Attached are the alternating frames from Return of the Joker. I'm including these pictures for sake of the thread as reference material, because history around here has a tendency to repeat itself.

Also: remind me to nag tepples to increase the maximum attachment limit from 3 to something like 6.

Also: in Nestopia, if under Options -> Video, you pick the NTSC Filter, and then under the Settings area set Scanlines: 100%, the effect during the credits is, understandably, a bit more tolerable. Overall I think this is just an effect done that looks best on actual CRT displays on an actual console. This is where the subject gets into something I used to laugh about back in the late 90s: console emulators practically having to emulate a CRT TV, of which the efforts, IMO, aren't not worth it.

There are 2 frames alternating, i.e. one frame shows up during the odd field, the other shows up during the even field. 60/2=30.

The theory is that if you run the game at 30fps, depending on how the emulator works (re: merging fields), you might end up with a non-flickering screen that shows both the background graphics and text as one image.

There are 2 frames alternating, i.e. one frame shows up during the odd field, the other shows up during the even field. 60/2=30.

The theory is that if you run the game at 30fps, depending on how the emulator works (re: merging fields), you might end up with a non-flickering screen that shows both the background graphics and text as one image.

I can't believe we're actually sperglording over this. LOL

No worries, I'm just making sure i understand, that's all. Nestopia has field merging, ill give this a whirl and see what happens.

There are 2 frames alternating, i.e. one frame shows up during the odd field, the other shows up during the even field. 60/2=30.

The theory is that if you run the game at 30fps, depending on how the emulator works (re: merging fields), you might end up with a non-flickering screen that shows both the background graphics and text as one image.

I can't believe we're actually sperglording over this. LOL

No worries, :lol: I'm just making sure i understand, that's all. Nestopia has field merging, ill give this a whirl and see what happens. :beer:

The NTSC filter Field Merge feature will not solve this problem. It would have to be done in a different manner in the emulator.

This is all separate from the YouTube videos. Those, again, were almost all certainly recorded using emulators and not from an actual NES with a capture device. If the latter was used, again, the results would vary depending upon how the capture device handled interlacing; the NES is kind of the red-headed stepchild in this regard.

In other words: trying to depict the way this was "intended to look" through capture devices can be tricky. The trickiness/annoyance is amplified by the fact this happens during the credit roll, so on an actual NES you'd have to play the game all the way through, then start fiddling around with capture device settings and god knows what else, and have a time limit of about 10-15 seconds (entire time the credit roll lasts) to do it in.

Have you ever seen YT videos or even live streams (Twitch, etc.) of people playing classic games (including arcade games) where it looks like their character, some item on the ground, or whatever, just simply doesn't appear? Surely the person playing sees it, but you don't. This is often a framerate difference; person sitting at the system might be seeing 60fps, but the capture medium is 30fps, so from your perspective you'd only see every other frame. It becomes even weirder with interlaced mediums.

Even "major" productions, like AVGN and Mike Matei's live streams, occasionally have problems with this. Though if I remember right, James and Mike use some pretty decent capture devices to deal with it, but occasionally you'll see some flicker of things (though sometimes they're not due to framerate or interlacing but rather design of the game itself -- Mega,an 2 is a common example). There's also the Framemeister, which does deinterlacing decently and can output to a 60fps medium plus do scaling, while some other scalers "fake it" by essentially capturing only one field and then "create" the missing frame by generating the delta between two (i.e. it's always 1 frame behind) (and visually, this looks awful).

I've already tested this using Batman: Return of the Joker on cartridge, on an actual NES, with a real Sony CRT and standard composite hookup (read: all stock hardware, NOTHING modified) -- because the technique used in the title of that game is the same as in the ending credits of Batman Returns:

- The starting title ("BATMAN" logo sliding in from the right one letter at a time) flickers badly.- The "BATMAN" logo panning up with the "Return of the Joker(tm)" text overlayed flickers just as badly.

In other words: it looks this way on actual hardware, thus is intentional (or, at least, expected).

I've already tested this using Batman: Return of the Joker on cartridge, on an actual NES, with a real Sony CRT and standard composite hookup (read: all stock hardware, NOTHING modified) -- because the technique used in the title of that game is the same as in the ending credits of Batman Returns:

- The starting title ("BATMAN" logo sliding in from the right one letter at a time) flickers badly.- The "BATMAN" logo panning up with the "Return of the Joker(tm)" text overlayed flickers just as badly.

In other words: it looks this way on actual hardware, thus is intentional (or, at least, expected).

Can we close this out now?

yes. I guess there's nothing you can do unless you hack the rom or emu.

This is the closest i could find. This was on a REAL nes because he states how he almost pulled out the game genie. Too bad he cuts it as soon the catwoman starts. I see some flicker....

This video is, again, an invalid validation: it's recorded using a digital camera or mobile phone (capture fps is thus unknown). The "flicker" you see in the scene with catwoman and the bat signal is caused by variance in brightness coming off of the CRT (which becomes very easily prevalent/noticeable when recording a CRT screen) -- it has a "pulsing" effect in the video itself (it doesn't happen at a constant rate because the recording device cannot deal with brightness changes that fast; it's a gradual adjustment). The brightness varies in that NES scene because the bat signal is flickering (one frame doesn't show the bat signal (hence black), the other does). This is compounded with the overall ambient lighting in the room being extremely dim.

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